Letter to My Wife

The most perfect gift I can offer you this Valentine's Day, my lovely partner, is not one fashioned from diamonds or gold. Nor could it be purchased in the finest stores on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. The gift I give is one only I can give you: a remembrance all our years together and those many Valentine's, our shared most special day.

I remember our first Valentine's together. That tiny apartment filled to overflowing with the passion we shared. You stood in the hallway--awaiting my entrance--wearing nothing more than that wide red ribbon across your eyes, as a blindfold, your wrists bound behind your back in silken restraints. Standing before me, naked as you were, my heart raced at your perfect beauty. It is still etched in my mind. Erotic and languid: hands behind your back, your right foot pointed inward and your right knee bent slightly, you were the most beautiful creature on the planet and my lust arose before my coat and briefcase clattered to the floor.

The bated breaths you took revealed the pounding inside your chest, the passions you always carried hidden between your pretty slim thighs. Touching you with my fingertips--my hot breath in your ears--brought a shudder over your entire body causing your small pink nipples to rise up in the expectation of my delicate attentions. When your mouth fell open to pull in air, fueling your raging sexual fires I felt my raging libido could tear though any simple fabric meant to contain it. It was desire personified.

As though the gods had reached through the clouds and touched one woman giving her all the gifts of desire, beauty, arousal; creating a perfect example of woman's power over man and mankind, a power balanced by the delight man and mankind can bestow upon woman's worried brow. The truest form of love and lust borne in one body and one soul: yours.

Deepest love, true love, can only fuel physical desire and our love fed the beast of our bodies' raging want; that creation of delicious friction that overwhelms both our mind and soul leaving us bare to the other, completed but exposed with no place to hide ourselves except in each other's arms; hidden, not from each other, but from the outside world's interference.

I took great comfort in your smooth thigh pressed against my cheek as I dipped my eager tongue inside the sweet dampness of your sex, sampling the mead of your womb. And your strained cries, from each climax, echoed in my ears and you had so many that evening I thought you might burst under my weight.

I am sure that was the night you bore the fruit of entwined love: our wonderful daughter.

That first Valentine's after Kaitlin entered our world was another day I remember well. Rocking our infant daughter so gently till she was in the arms of Morpheus: fully embraced and silent. You leaped to your feet. Kicking off your clothing in a mad rush you whispered to me, "Take me, I need you inside me. Just don't wake the baby."

Your cries of completion, normally quite loud and impassioned, that Valentine's, were but tiny squeaks lost in my neck, your teeth nipping at my skin to keep from shouting to the ceiling your love of my firmness held so tightly within the damp folds of your body.

I still laugh when I remember that day the previous fall. I arrived home to find you curled up on the couch weeping because you felt "as big as a house" feeling that you could never again spark that lust, we so often shared, while you looked as you did. Pulling you to your feet and peeling off that ratty old bathrobe brought me to a new sense of awe and filled me to the brim. Your plump flawless belly filled with our love and your engorged tender breasts ready to nurse our most precious possession caused inside me a sexual maelstrom I had never felt before. Making love to you, ever so gently, and the tears of joy you wept, crying "If you still love me when I look like this, you'll always love me."

In the afterglow, I tucked you under my arm, your warm smooth belly pressed into my side like the rib God took from Adam. At that moment your gentle snores filled me with something I could never explain with clumsy words, alone.

Your hand always seems to find my hardness in the bed we share. Many nights I awoke to the advance of your warm palm as it encircled my rigid flesh, both flesh and hand acting on orders, not from our conscious but some corporeal demands without our waking knowledge.

Your soft breathing uninterrupted, you slumbered while your grasp held me tight. I would lay back and sigh some nights at the gift of your love while others I would take you, still half asleep, attacking the depths of body until you would relinquish your physical rapture to my intrusion.

Oh, and those Valentine's when Kaitlin, off to visit her grandparents--as so often on our Valentine's celebrations--when you would surrender once again to the carefree woman-child I knew in college, dancing throughout the house ecstatic in the joy of your own nakedness and that freedom to tease me at your own wont. And tease me, you would.

Through the passing years, you maintained your figure, your fiery lust, and the sense of our shared love and desire... it amazes me, somehow. The bond we share never diminished or even flickered.

What was it, four years ago? The Valentine's you came to the dinner table wearing nothing but one of my white dress shirts, one with French cuffs. And you never laughed, but carried on like it was perfectly normal. And when you slowly popped each button after our meal and padded to my side of the table, open to me, watching my eyes to make sure I was enjoying the show. I loved every casual flick of your slender wrist.

You bouncing in my lap, I watched your lovely familiar face. You have so many expressions when we make love I'm not sure I have categorized them all but they do so fire my ardor: each and every one.

The instant when my sticky warm seed, penetrating your deepest recesses or splashing gently onto your slim belly, sweet plump breasts, or your delightful tongue—your eager mouth open, awaiting my release—are etched in stone, never to be relinquished until no spirit remains in me to carry these loving images. Images of lust and desire that only two people deeply in love can share populate the rolling plains where my daydreams reside.

The peculiar tremble in your hips, on the verge of ecstasy brought on by the dancing of tongue, never failed to cause a joy in my heart and a rebirth in my flesh, ready to please your sensual being one last time before sleep overtook us both. Not one inch of your sweet flesh was left untouched or unexplored by my tongue, fingers, or firm male intrusion... and all were accepted and even welcomed into your open body. Each a gift exchanged between us with the hope of continued acceptance... postmarked with undying love.

Wait: the alarm for the rice just went off. Now where was I? Oh yes,

That Valentine's evening we took pictures of one another late into the night, each one a testament to our lustiest desires--no film was ever exposed, nor even inserted into the camera, our imaginations alone recording our physical love—was one of our greatest nights. It was a night of screaming lust, crushing desire, and physical fatigue. My secretary asked me the next morning if I had "pulled a muscle" the night before. I could barely contain my laughter, choosing instead to shake my head quickly before retiring to the seclusion of my office where I could recount every precious hour of our time together.

Every step, every one of your impassioned gyrations, twirls, leaps, pliés, performed for my eyes only on Valentine's, are locked in my memory, ready for replay at the instant of my demise. All the romantic dinners, cards, small gifts, and each sacred minute we shared on that holiday, set aside to express ultimate love for another, wait in queue... the moments that made my life something valuable to me. And all those, are the most valuable moments to me, those moments we shared on Valentine's Day... and nights.

Oh ho. I hear a key in the door.

Back again, the key was just our lovely daughter. When she poked her head around the corner of the dining room I thought it was you briefly. Kaitlin, nineteen years old and so much like you. She peeked in at me with that sweet triangular smile--the same as yours--but then her open palm pressed against her forehead and her eyes squeezed shut.

She peered at the table--set for you and I--candles lit and lots of red hearts I cut out of some construction paper I found in the basement. Tears almost leaped from her eyes, screwed shut so tight. And then her chin wrinkled and her bottom lip quivered, exactly like you when you're about to cry.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" I pleaded.

She sniffed and a tremble in her voice tore at my heart. "Daddy, I miss her, too." She whimpered. Our sweet daughter still calls me daddy.

"I'm sorry," I replied in some confusion. "It's Valentine's. This is our special holiday. Your mother and I always celebrate together... alone." I added hoping she wouldn't be offended but would take my not so subtle hint.

"Daddy, I know. That's why I drove down."

I guess I forget sometimes, that the university is only a couple hours away.

"Daddy, sometimes good people die... People we love..."

Her tears were more than I could stand. "Please, stop." I begged, feeling my own eyes welling up.

"You have to go on with your life..." She paused in the doorway and then rushed to me throwing her arms around my head hugging me to her breast. I could smell bath power on her. It's the same bath powder you use. I don't know if you introduced Kaitlin to it or if you have such similar likes to find the same scents appeal to you both.

"Mom's not coming home, Daddy." Kaitlin was bawling aloud now. I could feel her tears splashing onto my forehead as she held me close.

I circled my arm around Kaitlin's waist and hugged her. "Of course she is, sweetheart. She's always home with me on Valentine's."

I felt her nod, her chin flush against my head. She sighed and held me tight in her grasp, sobbing quietly.